UCC MANAGEMENT BACKS MERGER WITH IRISH MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE - Management at University College Cork has approved a merger with the Irish Management Institute (IMI) in a deal estimated at €20.5 million, according to documents seen by The Irish Times.
A planned merger between the two educational institutions fell through in 2009 because of the economic downturn. According to draft minutes from a meeting held last month, however, plans to revise the proposal have been approved by management and are to be presented to the university’s finance committee and governing body for their approval. According to the draft minutes, a detailed update on the new proposal was presented to UCC management at the meeting. Bursar and chief financial officer Diarmuid Collins reportedly said €18 million would be needed to buy the campus with a further €2.5 million needed for refurbishment. The university is to fund the acquisition through a bank loan from AIB with repayments based on a sale and lease agreement with IMI, say the minutes. The document also says the university has already sought advice from PwC on the financial wellbeing of IMI and from Deloitte on the benefits of acquiring the institution.
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NO LEGAL REQUIREMENT FOR DAIL TO DEBATE GREECE'S EXTENSION - The Dáil is not expected to discuss the extension of the Greek bailout as there is no legal need to do so, writes the Irish Independent. While German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has requested a vote in his own parliament this week, the Department of Finance said the advice from the Attorney General is that there is no requirement to have a Dáil debate. However, Mr Noonan's spokesman has said that the four-month extension to the Greek bailout, agreed at an emergency meeting of Eurozone finance ministers on Friday, may be discussed at the Oireachtas Finance Committee during one of the minister's routine appearances. Mr Noonan said last week that he would feel "obliged" to put an extension deal before parliament, even though the Government wouldn't require its sanction. Yesterday, Eurozone finance ministers, including Mr Noonan, signed off on a package of Greek economic reforms that include a promise to cut the number of government ministries and special advisers and a commitment not to row back on any planned privatisations. The reforms were drawn up by the Greek government to seal the agreement thrashed out between the so-called Eurogroup on Friday night.
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DALATA TO CREATE HUNDREDS OF JOBS OVER NEXT 12 MONTHS - The country’s largest hotel group, Dalata will create hundreds of jobs over the coming 12 months as it continues its dominance of the sector. With 3,000 or so full-time employees already on the books, Dalata chief executive, Pat McCann says the group will add “at least a few hundred staff” this year with the exact figure depending on the strength of the group’s performance. The company is also set to launch a new brand of hotels aimed at the lucrative corporate market in the coming months, says the Irish Examiner. Having acquired the Moran Bewley’s Group for €455m in December, Dalata now has 27 owned or leased hotels 13 of which are to be packaged under a new yet-to-be-named brand. “We’ve been working on the new brand now for a number of months. The Maldron would be by and large a leisure brand whereas the new brand will be much more corporate,” said Dalata chief executive Pat McCann. Mr McCann didn’t rule out further expansion of the group’s portfolio, saying there’s still value to be had in the market. Opportunities in Dublin will become limited before long but the rest of the country continues to offer significant value with more hotels due to come on the market through the likes of Nama’s Project Crystal which contains seven properties.
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FTSE RECORD MASKS A MEDIOCRE RUN - The FTSE 100 has at last topped the record it set at the close of 1999. Should Britons celebrate? Probably not, says the Financial Times. First, the main index of the London market is still far from catching up with competitors. It has outperformed the likes of France and Japan since 1999, but the UK’s annualised real return of 1.4% since the FTSE’s last record lags behind the world as a whole (2.1%), and is less than half that of crisis-hit Spain (3.4%), according to the authoritative benchmarks kept by the London Business School academics Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton. Once dividends are reinvested, the FTSE has beaten UK retail price inflation - but the FTSE all-actuaries index of gilts has managed to return some 70 percentage points more over the last 15 years. Indeed, gilts have beaten equities over 25 years, a period that includes the great equity bull market of the 1990s, according to today’s annual Barclays equity-gilts study. The good news from this is that the FTSE is plainly nowhere near as overvalued as it was at the end of 1999. Earnings of its companies have doubled since then. Compared to gilts, equities even look cheap.
